Stop and consider! Life is but a day;
A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way
From a tree’s summit; a poor Indian’s sleep
While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep
Of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan?
Life is the rose’s hope while yet unblown;
The reading of an ever-changing tale;
The light uplifting of a maiden’s veil;
A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;
A laughing schoolboy, without grief or care,
Riding the springy branches of an elm.

Yes! Hilarious innit.

There’s also the Wordsworthian contribution - the unique individual’s work-

William: I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;

Will’s Boss: Not them. I sent you out for fish and chips ye daft pillock!

You might’ve guessed old Will is my least favourite Romantic. Older Will on the ovver ‘and is class.

I don’t know why they tried to publish a book which had such a risk of copyright infringement. Perhaps it stems from the fact that it was never intended to be a book in the first place - rather it grew out of Vander Ark’s fan website.

It wasn’t so much that they featured quotes which didn’t have attribution, but that they just took chunks of Rowling’s writing wholesale and used that as their “definition” (complete with distinctive phrases used by Rowling). So in many cases it was not really original writing at all.

The evidence given in the trial was that such Lexicons apparently have a practice of saying where they got any material from, and in multi volume series, they generally have some kind of code to indicate in which volume certain things are mentioned. This Lexicon didn’t do that. The plaintiffs’ witness was pretty dismissive about the lack of professionalism in this effort (well, of course he was).

To me, it sounded like an entrepreneurial publisher of a small operation trying to catch a ride before Warners got on to him. He persuaded Vander Ark into the project by indemnifying him in case of any breach of copyright action on the part of Warners and Rowling. Apparently he didn’t stop promoting the book even when Rowling’s publishers had served him with a cease and desist notice.

On copyright more generally, the thing about ideas is you can’t exclusively possess them in practical terms - so any scheme has to be an artificial monopoly. Unlike land (of which there is a finite supply) ideas are unlimited and therefore non-rivalrous.

The argument in favour of copyright is to provide authors etc with incentives to write by giving them the fruits of their labour (a very Lockean idea). But then, of course, you can go so far with your monopoly that you provide a disincentive to creativity. I would argue that US IP law (and the strictures they force on everyone else) goes too far, and stifles creativity.

Funnily enough, in the 18th century, the US was a notorious copyright pirate! That was when they were not producing copyrightable items, but taking them from England and Europe… The shoe’s on the other foot now.

My objection was general LE. I wasn’t really commenting on the specifics.

I do find it a little bizarre that an actual publishing project would ignore the fair use guide and proceed to try and publish something that belongs to one of the world’s largest media concerns and the only billionaire author to boot.

So either they’re really really dumb or there’s something else going on.

I’d wager that there’s probably a Warner Bros lexicon in the works and this is an attempt to control competition. The fact that no attribution’s been listed as one of the misdemeanours is a bit fishy. After all it’s pretty obvious where they’re drawing the quotes from. It’s a Harry Potter lexicon after all.

Perhaps it’s just a shonky book from a sloppy writer and a shady publisher trying to get away with it. I’m not sure.

Still IP law which is supposed to be about getting creative people paid and encouraging creativity is turning into a scheme by which large concerns control culture and actually inhibit creativity.

He would have been better off writing his own definitions without looking at Rowling’s work, and then quoting any relevant chunks of the book. If I were advising him on how to revise it, I’d also tell him to put in a lot more independent analysis.

I wonder if he looked at resources such as Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Frazer’s The Golden Bough and Campbell’s The Hero with A Thousand Faces? All useful if you are trying to analyse tropes of fantasy literature. That kind of literature generally plugs into some very old traditions, which is why it proves so popular. Of course, if Vander Ark used those sources, he’d have to reference them too!

I think what really made me think that the Lexicon was unfair was that half the time it didn’t attribute the sources. If it was a uni essay, Vander Ark would have been pinged for plagiarism!

Of course, in medieval times, it was regarded as a compliment to have one’s work plagiarised. The author generally didn’t do attributions because it was presumed that the reader was an educated person and would recognise where the passage came from. Printing and the capacity to disseminate one’s work widely changed all that.

Simon, glad you enjoyed the post.

I would never have bothered to read the judgement and without this post my opinion would have remained the way it was. Thanks for sharing.